Gym-Pact will pay you to go to the gym

The beginning of a new year sees a lot of us signing up for gym memberships, fully convinced that we will go everyday without fail and have that 6 pack in a matter of months. And then.. life happens. Work, school, kids – and before you know it you’re feeling guilty for not following up on your new year’s resolution.

Gym-Pact is a new iOS app that might help you keep this little promise to yourself. The idea of this app is very simple: if you go to the gym you will be rewarded with cash, and if you skip the workout, you will be docked some cash. No, Seriously, I am not kidding – you will get paid for working out!

You start by visiting the website[1], signing up, and setting your stakes: how many times do you aim to go to the gym? How much money are you willing to stake that you will go regularly? Once you’re done with that, you must install the iOS app on your iPhone and select your gym. Gym-Pact has a huge database of over 40,000 gyms in America alone. You can even add a gym that’s not on the list, and as long as it’s not a home gym or an office gym, they will approve it and add it to the list.

But how do they know that you have gone to the gym? Well, every time you are at the gym you will have to hit the “check in” button to inform Gym-Pact that you are indeed on location at your gym. Gym-Pact then will confirm via GPS whether you are really there or not.

But what about the cash prizes? People who go to the gym regularly get cash rewards, and People who don’t go get money deducted from the stakes they defined when they started. The money deducted from the accounts of those who didn’t go to the gym is re-distributed among those who regularly followed their schedule.

This is by no means a cash making venture, but more of a incentive based habit building ideology. A very innovative and functional way to stick to our gym schedules. I’d think that fear of losing money would get even the laziest of us into the gym and then perhaps that elusive dream of that 6 pack might come true.